Scott Reid

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

I guess it is not a mixed message to favour—

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

It says cash grants. It does not say all and it does not say some. My understanding is that if we can find a way of getting the government to be more generous with cash transfers we would be very happy about that. We will encourage that when we get the opportunity to do so.

When we have the opportunity to ensure that some of those transfers, and we do not know the percentage but whatever percentage we can wrangle out of the government, could be put into tax points to ensure that there would be a guaranteed growing base for health care and education in the provinces over time, we would favour that. When we see the way in which tax points grow over time thereby ensuring—

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I invite the member to check the record. We are not in favour of striking down the CHST. We are in favour of transferring some of the value of cash transfers to the provinces into tax points.

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I cannot find the contradiction that the hon. member cites but I do point out that part of what a government does is legislate so that it cannot act in an irresponsible manner. That is why we have a constitution in the country.

We make amendments to the constitution that are not amendable by one government alone. Depending upon the amending formula, it requires unanimity, seven provinces or 50% of the population. A couple of other amending formulas for exceptional cases require different levels of consent.

However the point is to legislate something that one cannot change oneself. We did that with the Canada pension plan, as the hon. member will know, so that the federal government could not unilaterally change the rules under which Canadians enjoy the potential benefits of that plan. It was an amending formula which, at least on paper, was more strict than that of the seven provinces or 50% formula in place under that plan.

One does act in this manner. When we speak of creating binding agreements with the provinces, the point is that we bind ourselves and future governments so that they must act in a consensual manner and they must find the support of those provinces. This ensures that a government, which is almost always elected by less than 50% of the population until we have some kind of electoral reform, cannot act without seeking some kind of broader consensus which actually reflects the will of the majority of Canadians.

I do not see what the contradiction is in saying that we would legislate to bind our own hands.

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I will start by deviating from the prepared remarks I have and comment on the question that was raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona. Presumably he was referring to CHST payments and Bloc grants.

I was involved as the Reform Party's senior researcher in 1995 or 1996 when the CHST legislation was proposed. It was really a rehashing of the legislation that permitted the former Canada assistance plan and the established programs financing plan to exist. We put forward some detailed amendments which, like all amendments that came forward in committee, were of course voted down and never given a fair hearing.

At that time I looked at the details of funding and how it was withheld when non-compliance occurred with federal standards under the CHST. What was striking about it was how utterly discretionary it was.

For instance, the Minister of Health decided whether a violation has taken place. The Minister of Health at his or her sole discretion decides whether or not a penalty is appropriate, what the amount of that penalty should be, whether it should apply in one province but perhaps not in another province and if compliance has not been achieved whether the penalty should continue. What we see is a situation in which we do not have a standard that is enforced by any kind of impartial mechanism.

We have a standard that is enforced, if it is enforced at all, based on political considerations. Is it a province in which the government holds a lot of seats? Is it a province in which it might hold a lot of seats in the future, if it does the right thing? Is it a province that is assertive in standing up for its rights or is it one that can be easily intimidated by the government? Is there an election coming? Has an election just occurred? Is this going to play well elsewhere in the country? There is a whole series of considerations that have nothing to do with providing for satisfactory health care.

We made recommendations at that time that would have created some form of right of appeal of citizens or of provincial governments before the Federal Court of Canada. The court would then make the decision whether or not a standard was being violated.

It would also have the salutary effect of actually defining some of the national standards under the Canada Health Act, which are often not as clear as they ought to be. That would have been a real step forward. All of that was put aside. Much of it was actually incorporated in the 1997 Conservative platform which my leader cited today.

The idea of trying to get co-operative national standards is a bit more detailed than finding some form of standard to which there is an agreement to co-operate with and therefore an enforcement mechanism. None of that has been done. Therefore we would find that the Canada Health Act and the block transfers that are given under the Canada health and social transfer would continue to be as they are now, that is, extremely ineffective in ensuring enforceable, meaningful national standards.

I would now like to draw the House's attention to the fact that the motion we are debating today fits within a growing stream of voices from across the country that are calling for an end to the imbalance that exists under which the provinces have the vast majority of the spending needs. It is because they are assigned the most important social programs under our constitution and under which the federal government draws in most of the revenue and therefore redistributes it. This is a problem that has existed for a very long time.

If we look back to Confederation, the Fathers of Confederation provided for per capita cash transfers that continue to this day but they are very small because they were in nominal dollars and the economy has grown and inflation has taken place. Nevertheless, there was a system set in place for transfers to provinces and, I should mention, these were non-discretionary. They could not be withheld for any reason. Therefore there were some assurances the provinces would operate effectively within their spheres of jurisdiction.

Listening to the voices in recent decades over the need to return to the original intent and spirit of the constitution, we find that many of the voices have come from Quebec.

For example, there was the Tremblay Commission in the 1950s, last century. There was former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who said in 1957 that there was no real basis for the federal spending authority in the constitution.

There are also the interim report of the Quebec Liberal Party special committee on the political and constitutional future of Quebec society that came out in January of this year, the report by the constitutional commission of Action démocratique du Québec and the Séguin commission.

All of these groups are talking about the transfer of tax points.

Outside of Quebec we see the same concerns being raised with an ever clearer voice. For example, an eminent scholar, Thomas Courchene, has recommended some form of tax point solution to the fiscal imbalance that exists in Canada. The so called firewalls group in Alberta has called for something of this nature.

The Canadian Alliance has been a consistent voice in favour of using some form of tax point system that would ensure our economy grows and that the health care needs of our aging population would be met without going through the song, dance and chicanery that went on when the government cut its own expenditures by a mere 6%. At the same time as it cut transfers to the provinces for health care and education, by I believe 20% to 25%, it also tried to lay the blame for the lack of health care spending on the provinces.

The tax point solution was also the policy of the former Reform Party. It was an excellent policy and one that we can all stand behind. I was involved in actually drafting the policy so I will read it for the benefit of the House. It states:

The Reform Party supports the establishment of an agreement to replace federal cash grants to the provinces with unconditional transfers of the tax base of each province, adjusted for differential provincial economic development so that the provincial tax revenues collected in each province will grow in parallel with the growth in the province's economy and population. This will allow the content and particulars of provincial policy to be set by provincial government clearly accountable to the electorate of that province.

Something needs to be said when the point is made about being accountable to the electorate of a province. Sometimes it is suggested that the federal government ought to impose national standards because the federal government knows best what Canadians care about and what is important to them. That means we must accept that the voter who goes out and casts a vote in the province of Ontario or Quebec is acting less responsibly and has less of a social conscience at that moment than he or she does when casting a ballot in the federal election. It infers that somehow there is this schizophrenia in the Canadian voter, that we are a hardhearted and uncaring people when we vote provincially but when we vote federally, boy we sure do care.

That is obvious nonsense and the only way it gets through is because there has been a really concerted effort on that side of the House to maintain that fiction. There is a very powerful vested interest in saying that the Liberals are the responsible ones here, that they are the ones who dictate what is good, fair and right in the country and that they protect our interests.

As I mentioned in my comments to the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona, the record shows that the federal government's performance in this area has been appalling. It has been shameful, inconsistent and politically based. It has not been based upon any kind of fairness or objectivity.

When other parties such as our own have come forward and proposed ways in which it could be made fair, objective and actually guarantee that health care and other national standards would be maintained through an agreed upon, consensual process that would be enforceable and would reflect the will of Canadian voters, it has been rejected out of hand without any hearing whatsoever. That is unfair and it should be changed.

The tax point solution proposed by the eminent authorities I have cited and also by the Bloc Quebecois today is the best solution. I encourage all members in the House to vote for it.

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the member was erudite and thorough in his response. He made the point that the value of tax points ceded in the 1970s has grown sixfold. I do not know if that is in purely nominal terms or in real terms. I suspect it is in nominal terms. Nevertheless they have grown over time.

That is the great virtue of tax points as opposed to simple transfers that take place through the equalization system or through the CHST. Such transfers do not grow and therefore do not respond to the growing need for provincial expenditures in health care, education and other areas that will grow over time, particularly health care as the population ages.

What justification can be given for not ensuring that our health care system, which is by consensus across the country the most valuable of all our social programs, is funded through an expanding, guaranteed tax base that cannot be cut as was the CHST or its predecessor in the early to mid-1990s by the Liberal government? Those cuts left provinces in the lurch and created a funding crisis which continues to this day, notwithstanding the partial and very tardy, if I may say, return of some of those funds to the provinces.

Looking at those two options, what would be the principal reason for denying provinces a predictable tax base whereby they could operate the most important of all social programs at their disposal?

[Proportional Representation, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for all the failings of the first past the post electoral system, and they are considerable, there is nevertheless a very powerful interest group that has a strong incentive to keep that system in place. That interest group is us.

All 301 members of parliament are here because the first past the post system put us here. It may be that we will be able, through the efforts of high-minded members such as the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle and others like him, to temporarily build a majority within the House that is brave enough or self-sacrificing enough to abandon the status quo for a future that would return only some of us to this place, but it will be an uphill battle. If we engage in uphill battles, we have to make sure that as many factors as possible are on our side.

Today I want to make a specific proposal, not a proposal for a specific electoral system to replace first past the post. I do not want to endorse the multi-member proportional system or the alternative ballot or multiple member districts or any of the other versions of proportional representation that have been put forward in the past. Each of these has its own unique merits. Each has some demerits as well. Most significantly, each system has a reasonably predictable impact on how each of the existing parties would perform in a future election if the vote distribution were to be the same as it was in last November's general election.

If we try as a group to select a system in advance I can guarantee that the system will be reviewed and analyzed by each person and each party with one question foremost in mind: how will this help me or how will this hurt me? If any part of the tenuous coalition that we are today beginning to build decides that partisan or personal considerations outweigh the merits of the specific system being proposed, that in itself will likely prove sufficient to kill the proposal.

Today I am proposing that we engage as parliamentarians in a three stage process to bring about the successful implementation of genuine electoral reform.

First, we need to build a coalition of parliamentarians, intellectuals and journalists behind the idea that first past the post is not acceptable in a mature democracy and that some kind of electoral reform is needed. This process is already partly under way. Electoral reform has a prominent place in the Canadian Alliance statement of policies and principles, which reads:

To improve the representative nature of our electoral system, we will consider electoral reforms, including proportional representation, the single transferable ballot, electronic voting, and fixed election dates, and will submit such options to voters in a nationwide referendum.

Second, and here I am merely repeating my party's proposal on the matter, we need to establish a process by which Canadians can vote directly on the question of electoral reform. However I do not favour a single referendum. That would involve putting a single model of electoral reform on the ballot and letting voters choose between it and the status quo.

Instead I recommend a referendum to authorize the striking of a commission and the holding of a second referendum on the findings of the commission. The commission could contain members of all parties or it could contain experts and individuals of undoubted integrity and impartiality. Its mandate would be to select three or perhaps four alternative models which could be presented to the Canadian electorate in a second referendum.

The third stage of the process would be the holding of the second referendum that had been mandated by the first. In the second referendum the electorate would be presented with a preferential ballot on which each voter would rank the proposed models in order of preference. If one model had the support of a majority of voters on the first count of the ballots, it would become the new electoral system of Canada.

If no model were chosen on the first count, the least preferred model would be removed from the table and all ballots in which it had been the preferred model would be recounted and redistributed according to the second preferences on those ballots. This process would continue until one model had obtained at least half the total votes cast.

Such a process would ensure a consensus result. The system finally chosen might not be the ideal preference of most voters, but it would at least be a system which very few people had found to be their least favourite choice or totally unsuitable.

To be on the safe side, the existing first past the post system should be one of the alternatives that voters could select on their preferential ballots. This would ensure that even if the commission had done its job poorly and selected a range of entirely unacceptable options, the worst that could happen would be a return to the status quo.

Such a process would produce a majority in favour of change. What would the new electoral process look like in the end? Frankly I do not know. That is the whole point. I can support the process. The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle can support it, as can members on all sides of the House as long as each of us is confident in the wisdom of the people and hopeful that the system we prefer will at some future date get a fair hearing.

One of the great philosophers of the past century, John Rawls, wrote in his book, A Theory of Justice , of the impossibility of achieving consensus on moving forward to a just society as long as participants in the process know who the winners and losers will be. He proposed a thought experiment in which each person's existing position within society was hidden from view behind what Rawls referred to as a veil of ignorance. In such a situation all would endorse a new and more just state in an improved society because everybody would have a greater possibility of being a net winner than of being a net loser.

If we hope to succeed at changing our system of electing representatives to this place, we need to emulate Rawls' model. We need to place the final outcome behind the Rawlsian veil and move forward, certain only of the fact that what will be produced in the end will be better and more beneficial for the country than what we have today.

[Infrastructure, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there is a transportation infrastructure crisis in eastern Ontario, and particularly in the high growth areas in the western part of the new city of Ottawa.

Due to the explosion in gasoline prices the federal government has enjoyed billions of dollars in new revenues in Ontario alone from its petroleum excise tax. Yet this year it will be giving only $681 million to Ontario for all infrastructure and only a portion of that will wind up being used for roads.

In last week's provincial budget the Ontario government promised $70 million for infrastructure development in the new city of Ottawa with particular emphasis on adding new lanes to the Queensway from the Highway No. 7 interchange through to Nepean. If it goes forward this expansion will provide the relief that is needed to sustain local growth.

However federal assistance is needed as well. Will the federal government, flush with cash from its unbudgeted windfall in tax revenues on gasoline, match the Ontario government and show that it cares about the economic growth of Lanark county, West Carleton and Kanata?

[Business Development Bank Of Canada, May 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have no idea what that was about. Let me ask my supplementary question this way.

The Prime Minister has openly admitted that he pressured the Business Development Bank for a loan to the Auberge Grand-Mère. We all know the auberge defaulted on the repayments, so it would be routine for a bank to call the loan. Yet the BDC said that the document recording the foreclosure was forged. What reason does the BDC have to believe that the document was forged?

[Business Development Bank Of Canada, May 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for the second time in a month officials of the Business Development Bank are claiming that an internal document obtained by the media is a forgery. Last month it was a financial record. This time it is a chronology relating to the recall of the $615,000 loan for which the Prime Minister had personally lobbied.

The accusation that forgeries are being either produced or leaked on a recurring basis is a serious charge. On what grounds is this accusation being made?